User blog:BobTheDoctor27/Spring 2018 Update
Okay, let's see if I remember how to do this... Editor's Note It's been about four years since my last user blog update. For those of you religiously following the monthly blogs that kept the wiki activity running from 2011-2014, you may find that a lot has changed. While I have taken a few steps back from producing Fractures Universe stories and begun shifting more towards canon-compliant content, I have still been churning out fanon story serials for you to enjoy: *''Besieged'' - Finally finished! *''Rumbling Hearts'' - Vorred loves it *''Relentless'' - Written as part of a multi-seasonal short story collab project *''The Things We Bury'' - Gen 2 story where Tahu gets possessed by a Skull Spider *''Endgame'' - My Gen 2 summer blockbuster crossover story soon to be completed that got rave reviews in other circles! *''Relevance'' - G1 canon-compliant serial set during the Bohrok Kal Saga *''Exit Wound'' - Mersery x Jarodin slashfic Outside the sphere of story serials I've also gone through a lot of personal changes. I took over Shadowmaster's position as CBW bureaucrat, learnt how to spell "bureaucrat", activated two moderately successful Tumblr and Flickr accounts, faked my death to escape student loans, got a new girlfriend, and graduated my university course with First Class Honors! Lots of big changes. Lots of personal developments. All things considered, the past few years have been good to me. That being said though, I seem to have neglected to make any monthly blog updates since early 2014. While this was owing partly to the innovation of wiki chat and my addiction to instant messaging, I felt I was beginning to get a bit tired of the format, which consisted largely of memes, bad jokes, and poorly-taken pictures that did not age well. While my old monthly blog updates were beloved by many dozens of CBW members, I found myself growing exhausted with them. As my academics came to occupy a larger chunk of my spare time, I resolved simply to forgo monthly blog updates, confident that other users could produce content to fill the vacuum. But, alas, even the best-laid plans can fall apart when negligence is a component of their machination. Such is the extent of this sad state of affairs that it seems instant messaging chats have come to take over the way this wiki works, with Discord DMs proving more convenient than posting talk page messages and with channels dedicated to story and fanon discussion, Instant Messaging alternatives have rendered user blogs of the past practically irrelevant. Well, no more. I, BobTheDoctor27, shall be the first to publicly announce my plans to shift back to the wiki-proper, starting with this blog. It's time to build our activity back up and consolidate this community, which has given me so much over the years. Four Years-Worth of Updates MOCs Lots of creations have been rolled off the Bobdo assembly line since my last update. Tollubo and Thode both got big revamps that have gone unmentioned in blog post, as did secondary characters like Gribrak, Kazaat, and Racasix. This long stretch of time also saw the creation of new characters into the Bobdo Story Arc, such as Nelvik, Ramonda, Pofia, and Aartok. Unfortunately, this also means that staple characters of the Fractures storyline - namely Caliga and Tourik - have been disassembled until I can give them proper revamps. Over the past two years I've been doing Standardized Revamps much to the chagrin of CL of many G1 Toa and Hero Factory sets. While I hope to continue this trend into the future, I know there is only so long those types of revamps can remain relevant. Still, the process has spawned my most popular creation yet: Standardized Matoro Mahri. Let's see, what can I even say about the future... The Toa Hagah: It has long-since been my dream to build a full Toa Hagah team. While my previous version of Gaaki was pretty well-received and my Bomonga MOC seems to have gone down something of a success, I still find myself wanting to do revamps with custom Shapeways Kanohi masks, kinda like this. I'm thinking of gold accents for Bomonga and Pouks and silver for Gaaki and Kualus, though I have gone back and forth on this. I feel I can't give Kualus gold armor as this would give him the color scheme of a Toa of Light, and giving gold armor to Gaaki (while it does look good) makes her look like a Toa of Psionics. Got any suggestions for specific Shapeways Kanohi masks or color schemes that I should use for specific Toa Hagah? Let me know in the comments below! Generation 2 Revamps: I blasted through the 2015 Master and Protector sets, with revamps that have made their way into previous MOC Blogs on the wiki. In recent months I've tried to revamp the Uniters too, but this time out of a wearier obligation rather than a genuine desire to have functional versions of the characters in my possession. At present I still need to do Kopaka, Gali, and Umarak but have no real motivation to accomplish this. Still, I'm very proud of just about all previous revamps I have done of these canister sets through 2015 and they're well-worth checking out. Dark Hunters: Over the past year especially, I've been going through various fan-created instructions to try and reverse-engineer some of the better Dark Hunters. At present, I have "Ancient" and "Tyrant" assembled, but my intent is to someday build "Dweller" and, my personal favorite, "Lurker". I'm currently on a quest to build "Lurker" so I'll let you guys know how that's going! Popular CBW Characters: My quest started as early as 2014 with the Dream Team characters of Mersery, Tollubo, Niha, Jarodin, SP, and Vorred. However, when plans fell through, I began to tinker with other popular characters. Over the next month I hope to build Tayluu, Arker, and Hydros to join Merall and Rezan amongst the lineup. Matoran: Of course, no Bobdo blog would be complete without at least a paragraph dedicated to my ever-lasting fascination with Matoran. After rewriting Fluvia's page to make her a more canon-compliant character, I took the liberty of designing some other Metrutoran academics to fill in her set, including a revamp of Dessal. My intent is to build six more Matoran from academic fields that can be used as all-purpose scholars from the history of Metru Nui. At present, I have three more Kanohi to paint and some less common Kanoka disks to arrive from a bricklink order, then Metru Nui can dive back into academia. I'm also working to rebuild a couple of old sets at the moment, including: Lesovikk and Sea Sled, purple Nui Jaga, and Kopeke. And. if that's not enough, the best place to comprehensively catch up with all my MOC creations is through my Brickshelf WIP gallery or through my comprehensive Flickr Albums. Goals For Next Update Okay, this is a new segment I'm wanting to start, which I hope will spice up my bi-monthly blog updates and prompt folk to comment. I'm going to list a couple of goals that I want to have achieved by the next update and, if I fail to accomplish them, I have to accept a punishment suggested by you, dear , in the comments below. Shall we get started? *'The Completion of' Zero Hour **That's right, I'm going to try and finish the final chapter this month... so I'm definitely going to need a punishment for when I fail to meet this deadline. *'Arker and Tayluu must be built by the next update!' **I might need another two years for Skorr... *'I must make another YouTube MOC Showcase video for a BIONICLE character!' **I need to get into the habit of doing this. *'I must independently review at least two fanon stories and give them favorable spotlight reviews!' **Let's start a book club. Hopefully I can accomplish at least one of the above goals and hopefully you guys will be gentle in the comments below. YouTube Endeavors As we gear up towards the Grand Relaunching of the CBW YouTube channel, I'm also trying to get back into the process of creating videos. Since the new year I have uploaded two MOC videos, one for an armybuilder Skakdi named Vulpak 1, and a Hero Factory MOC named Thorne 3.0 2. As the year goes on I will no doubt be making more videos in this style, building a portfolio and gaining the skills I will need to create video content for the wiki. While I'm already very proficient at editing, short videos like this are definitely something I want to make more of. If you've seen any MOCs of mine that you think are deserving of a showcase video then please let me know below. :dislike, unsubscribe, and flag as inappropriate pls In Closing Welp, looks like another successful blog post. Very happy to get this old ritual back off the ground again. Hopefully it can still bring in the staggering number of responses that previous blogs have managed to. I'm really thankful to everyone who managed to read down this far. I hope I have managed to entertain you and that you are excited as I am for the future. Now keep calm and praise Sungod Thode.